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In mid-June, the West High baseball team played two games against Cedar Rapids Prairie.

West suffered a doubleheader sweep, 2-1 in eight innings in the first game and 6-3 in the second game. The Trojans scored three runs in the top of the first in the nightcap before allowing six unanswered.

Five weeks later, West (31-11) meets Prairie (31-7) again, this time in a Class 4A substate final at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Cedar Rapids. The winner advances to the state tournament. There aren’t many more high leverage matchups than this.

“We know we lost twice to them,” West coach Charlie Stumpff said. “They’re a good team. We played two competitive games with them. They’re very aggressive, they run a lot. They’re a really good high school team that you have to stay on top of, otherwise they’ll run you out of a game. Hopefully we minimize our mistakes, get some base runners on, and get a lead. If we play well, we’ll compete.”

West has won 18 of its last 20. Neither team lost more than two games in a row all summer.

The Trojans carry a .318 team batting average into Wednesday’s action along with a 2.72 team ERA. Prairie is hitting .358 as a team with a 2.39 team ERA.

While West isn’t too far behind, Prairie’s offense has been prolific. The entire starting lineup for Prairie is hitting .295 or better.

The Hawks won their first-round substate game last Friday, 10-0 over Cedar Rapids Washington. West, meanwhile, defeated Burlington 8-5 Friday and Ottumwa 14-7 Monday to reach the substate final.

West likes its balance as Stumpff’s club is one win from returning to state, where it finished as the runner-up in 2014.

“We have really good team chemistry,” West right fielder Connor McCaffery said. “We all play well together. We trust each other. We get in tough situations, and we know who’s going to play well and who’s going to come through for us with a two-out hit. Those are really important. We trust our starters, we trust our bullpen guys. Our offense kind of takes care of itself. We all can hit, we’ve all shown we can hit.”

While the Trojans had issues in the later innings earlier in the season, center fielder Kevin DeLaney — who leads the team with a .478 average and .507 on-base percentage after hitting for the cycle Monday — said that notion was cleared up several games ago.

“We’ve gotten immensely better as a whole,” DeLaney said. “We’re more confident in late-game situations. Earlier in the year we struggled to finish games out. Now, I think we can beat anyone.”

Reach Matt Cozzi at mcozzi@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5409, and follow him on Twitter at @matt_cozzi.